734 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



deference to the Chaldean and other ancient myths and legends 

 embodied in the Hebrew sacred books. 



About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great con- 

 quest of the scientific over the theologic method. At that time 

 Francesco Redi published the results of his inquiries into the 

 doctrine of spontaneous generation. For over two hundred years 

 the accepted doctrine had been that water, filth, and carrion had 

 received power from the Creator to generate worms, insects, and 

 a multitude of the smaller animals. This doctrine had been espe- 

 cially welcomed by St. Augustine and many of the fathers, since 

 it relieved the Almighty of making, Adam of naming, and Noah 

 of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species. 

 But to this fallacy Redi put an end. By researches which could 

 not be gainsaid, he showed that every one of these animals came 

 from an egg ; each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an 

 animal created, named, and preserved from " the beginning." 



Similar work went on in England, but with a more distinctly 

 religious tendency. In the same seventeenth century a very 

 famous and popular English book was that by the naturalist 

 John Ray, a fellow of the Royal Society, who produced a num- 

 ber of works on plants, fishes, and birds ; but the most widely 

 read among all his books was entitled The Wisdom of God mani- 

 fested in the Works of Creation. Between the years 1691 and 1827 

 it passed through nearly twenty editions. 



Ray argues the goodness and wisdom of God from the adapta- 

 tion of the animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives 

 and surroundings. 



In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. ISTehemiah Grew, 

 of the Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute 

 anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design. 

 Discoursing on " the ends of Providence," he says, " A crane, 

 which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheas- 

 ant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or 

 twenty." He points to the fact that " those of value which lay 

 few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove." He 

 breaks decidedly from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature 

 are caused by sin, and shows that they, too, are useful ; that, " if 

 nettles sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and 

 cattle " ; that, " if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better 

 hedge " ; and that, " if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the 

 thief." " Weasels, kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to 

 watchfulness ; thistles and moles, to good husbandry ; lice oblige 

 us to cleanliness in our bodies, spiders in our houses, and the 

 moth in our clothes." This very optimistic view, triumphing over 

 the theological theory of noxious animals and plants as effects of 

 sin, which prevailed with so much force from St. Augustine to 



